Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$37500.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: Austen / 1816 / Emma (Safe 8, 85836) Three duodecimo volumes. Each in contemporary brown half calf over brown marbled boards, rebacked with original gilt-stamped and lettered spines laid down (some wear and rubbing to joints, with initial blanks loose in volume 3). Armorial bookplate of John Angerstein on front pastedown of each volume (with offsetting on facing front endpaper). Scattered foxing (mostly to volumes 1 and 2) and minor offsetting. Minor stain at foot of margin of I3-I4 of volume 1, minor crease in gathering P of volume 1, affecting "not" on line 14 of P3v, minor crease at start of gathering M of volume 2. Lacking half-titles (as usual, per Keynes). [4], 322, [2], 351, [2], 363, [1, pub. ad]. Housed in custom brown quarter-morocco clamshell case. First Edition of Austen's enduring novel of manners London: Printed for John Murray, 1816. First two volumes printed by C. Roworth Bell-yard, Temple Bar. Third volume printed by J. Moyes, Greville Street, Hatton Garden, London. Jane Austen completed Emma by March 29, 1815, whereafter her and brother Henry's negotiations with John Murray and stationer's delays brought the publication date to 1816, the last of her novels published during her lifetime (Gilson). Austen's dedication to the Prince Regent (the future King George IV), a man she had privately described as debauched, was the result of an invitation to Carlton House in 1815 where his librarian James Stanier Clark offered it after revealing his royal highness' enthusiasm for her novels; his dedication copy of Emma was bound in red morocco gilt (Gilson). Although Emma proved successful, selling 1,248 of 2,000 copies by October 1816, Austen's first payment in 1817 was only 39.18s after John Murray's second edition Mansfield Park made a loss. In Sir Walter Scott's unsigned review of Emma for the Quarterly Review of October 1815 (issued in 1816), he commends that, "the author of Emma confines herself chiefly to the middling classes of society; her most distinguished characters do not rise greatly above well-bred country gentlemen and ladies; and those which are sketched with most originality and precision, belong to a class rather below that standard." The story has proved enduring, begetting three critically acclaimed films, including a modern retelling in Clueless.
Seller: Barry Lawrence Ruderman, La Jolla, CA, U.S.A.